Eleanor Johnson

Professor Johnson specializes in late medieval English prose, poetry, and drama; medieval poetics and literary philosophy; law and literature in the Middle Ages; and vernacular theology.

Her first book, Practicing Literary Theory in the Late Middle Ages: Ethics and the Mixed Form in Chaucer, Gower, Usk, and Hoccleve, was published in 2013 (Chicago). She is currently writing a new book called Aesthetic Contemplation: Participatory Theology in Middle English Prose, Verse, and Drama.

Her recent and forthcoming articles include "Feeling Time, Will, and Words: Vernacular Devotion in The Cloud of Unknowing (Journal for Medieval and Early Modern Studies, 2011), "The Poetics of Waste" (PMLA, 2012), "Objects of the Law: the Cases of Dorigen and Virginia" (forthcoming, 2015), an essay on Chaucer's Man of Law's Tale (JEGP, 2015), an essay on trespass and contract law in Troilus and Criseyde in the New Chaucer Handbook (Oxford, 2015), and a new edition and facing-page translation of the 14th century poem "Wynnere and Wastoure" (Broadview Press, 2013, online edition).

Two collections of her poetry, The Dwell (Scrambler Books) and Her Many Feathered Bones (Achiote Press) were published in 2009 and 2010.